Even though the Republican Party is more like a desiccated pea pod of anachronistic social angst about changing demographics, they can sure put on a half decent vaudeville show every four years, which, with some, er, exceptions, manages to cobble together enough support to make serious runs at our nation's highest office. This year, in its effort to convince America that it isn't primarily a party of white men and Southerners, the GOP has scheduled an array of women, African Americans and Latinos to offer onlookers beguiling messages about diversity and progressiveness from the GOP of the 21st century.

Except that, according to the Washington Post, the GOP's voting contingency has, especially in recent years, become increasingly narrow. In the 2008 presidential campaign, for instance, the Republican Party gathered 54 percent of Southerners and 57 of all white men tenderly to its bosom. These have been the party's most reliable voting blocs, though if you were a GOP-novitiate from Denmark, say, who happened to be in Tampa for one of the city's famed bukkake festivals and you swung by the RNC just to see what all the yelling was about, well, then you might not know that the Republican Party is so white-washed, Southern-fried and whatever not so polite epithets you can think of to adequately describe the narrow Republican base.

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Southern speakers include Newt Gingrich (who doesn't even really count, so says the WaPo), Mike Huckabee and some other jowly drawlers that no one really cares about. However, even though Republican men govern Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, the RNC invited only two Southern governors to speak: Nikki Haley from South Carolina and Bobby Jindal from the beleaguered state of Louisiana. Young hotshot candidates like war veteran Tom Cotton from Arkansas were overlooked for Utah congressional hopeful Mia Love, an African American woman, and Texas Senate hopeful Ted Cruz, a Cuban-American. That's because the Republican Party is all about diversity, or at least the mottled veneer of diversity that looks so good on television but, apparently, not on the pages of an official party platform.